This invention relates to an IC magazine supply system, and more particularly it is concerned with an IC magazine supply system capable of automatically supplying IC magazines to an IC handler and discharging same therefrom by means of magazine stackers which may be located in an IC inlet section or an IC outlet section of the IC handler.
After IC chips are molded into packages and their appearance is tidied, the packages are placed in IC magazines (hereinafter magazines, for short) for ease of handling in the plants of IC makers. This is because supplying the chips to the IC handler for automatic inspection and discharging same therefrom after the inspection is finished are facilitated when the packages are of the DIP type and have connecting pins arranged on both sides thereof, if the packages are arranged in magazines on a slide way of the straddling type.
It has hitherto been practiced to supply the magazines to an IC handler by using a magazine supply system with a single magazine stacker arranged in an IC feeding section (for receiving the magazines holding IC packages therein) of an IC handler or an IC discharging section (for receiving magazines holding no IC packages therein) thereof. Such magazine stacker is operative to stack a multiplicity of magazines in a vertical direction in a stack and provided on its bottom with means for taking the magazines out of the magazine stacker one after another and allowing same to move downwardly. In the prior art, a single row of magazine stacker is used and this arrangement has had some problems. One of them is that when the time required for inspecting each IC chip is short, feeding of the magazines to the IC handler or stacker might not be able to keep pace with an inspection performed in the IC handler if the IC packages are contained in a small number in one magazine. When they have a large number of pins and their package length is longer, only a small number of packages can be contained in one magazine, and a similar problem may be recognized. Thus the IC handler might often become idle during an inspection operation on account of no IC chips being supplied to the IC handler from the magazine stacker, thereby reducing the efficiency with which inspection is carried out by the IC handler.